If you got a new smartphone for Christmas, congratulations. You'll probably love it. And sorry to be the Grinch, but so will criminals, who stole an estimated 1.6 million smartphones last year, making them one of the riskier things you can carry on American streets these days.

Theft of iPhones and similar devices is epidemic, according to police chiefs and prosecutors. In San Francisco, mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are the target in about 50% of all robberies, and the rate for cellphones in other cities runs around 40%. Some of these robberies turn deadly.

The reason for the epidemic is simple: Stolen smartphones can mean quick cash on the black market. A smartphone can fetch $200 to $300 on the street — or as much as $2,000 in Hong Kong, according to the San Francisco district attorney's office.

One way to cut smartphone robberies is for users to be careful where they flash their devices. But the best way would be to make stolen phones useless to thieves or black-market buyers by making it easy for owners to "brick" them — render them inoperable. Thieves would steal a lot fewer phones if they knew owners could quickly turn them into paperweights.

Apps to do this are available, but many can be defeated. Cellphone makers such as Apple and Samsung have devised more foolproof protection, and you'd think cell carriers would be rushing to embrace such technology to protect their customers. You'd be wrong.

CTIA, the trade association that represents carriers such as Verizon and AT&T, has opposed making such easy-to-use "kill switches" automatically available in phones.

As an alternative to pre-installed kill switches, CTIA worked with the Federal Communications Commission to set up a database for stolen phones that is supposed to block them from being reactivated by participating carriers.

This is better than nothing, but there are problems: The database relies on a stolen phone's unique identification number, which sophisticated criminals can alter. A phone that can't make calls might still work fine on Wi-Fi networks. And, finally, the database doesn't apply in most overseas markets, where a lot of the stolen phones end up.

The CTIA argues that kill switches permanently disable phones. But available technology allows the original owners to disable stolen phones and reactivate them with a user name and password if they're recovered.

Why would cell carriers want to block kill switches? San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon has said he suspects that carriers fear the technology would hurt their lucrative handset insurance business. One idea for kill switch protection would make the switch standard on all phones, but charge a flat fee per year — say $30 — for a premium add-on that would either return a stolen phone or replace it with a new one. Cell carriers currently charge about $7 to $11 a month for insurance. Do the math.

Whatever the reason, it doesn't justify failing to protect customers. In face of this obstructionism, politicians are proposing laws to require that phones come with technology that can make them inoperable. That shouldn't be necessary, but if industry won't act, it could be the only way.

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